Graphisads and the
Journey of Alok Gupta
Alok
Gupta, the young director of Graphisads, speaks with maturity that belies his
age. As he describes it, “Graphisads is a 4 decade old family run business
started by my father Mukesh Gupta in the field of advertising and media. Our’s
is a 360 degrees advertising agency and a leading outdoor advertising media
owner dealing in print/electronic media, creative designing, events and
exhibitions and digital media”. A second generation entrepreneur, Alok candidly
appreciates his father’s wisdom in not pushing his children into their
established and flourishing advertising and media business. “While growing up,
I was always certain that I would never work for someone, as in a full time
employment. I always knew it was business that I wanted to do. After completing
my education, I immediately took the plunge by joining our family business. Not
content with the work, I always wanted to start something of my own. Dad was
always supportive and I started independent/ unrelated business of e-commerce/
Home Shopping, burnt my fingers, started a business of electric bikes and
eventually learnt to see value in our family business. While I was never away
from our traditional media business, post the failures, I joined back family
business voluntarily and happily. Dad allowed me to taste failure and in
hindsight I believe it is better to fail early on”, he said. Talking about his
induction, Alok says,”Family business is a learning curve. Getting the tuning
right with your employees and bringing new changes in the organization becomes
a challenge. Whenever a young family member joins an organisation, his quick
growth through the ranks is considered as a given. But in my case, I was
trained in all aspects of the business, and then thrown in the deep end of the
ocean to swim to save myself. Dad felt that it was necessary for me to work
with and work like other employees to understand their point of view.”
Looking
back at his journey of last ten years, Alok feels that the biggest challenge
was communication, despite the fact that they are in the business of
communication! “It is far easy to prepare market communication strategies for
clients than actually communicating with father, uncles and old employees” he
said laughingly. Alok’s attempts at professionalizing the work culture and
setting up systems and processes was resisted and attempts were even made to
drive a wedge between him and his father Mukesh Gupta. “It was Dad’s faith in
me and our strong family values that helped us bring in the desired changes.
Some employees took it positively and co-operated while some left us. It was
tough but necessary to pave the way for a modern flexible business”, Alok
said. These changes made their team
agile and flexible gave them the ability to diversify not only into allied
areas like digital media, events and exhibitions but also set up new verticals
in construction, waste management. Asked which business is closest to his
heart, Alok says that a big drawback of small businesses is that they get
emotional instead of being rational towards their business. “I am passionate
about all my businesses but at the same time I am detached. The world today is
dynamic and fast paced. There is no point in holding on to businesses that have
so scope in future.”
Talking
about the most important influences on his career, Alok cites the strong family
values imbibed in his childhood and the education he received at University of
Birmingham, UK and SPJAIN, Mumbai. More than the education, it was the exposure
of staying independently in UK and then in Mumbai which was a great experience.
He feels that his grandfather’s insistence on all the family members meeting for
the Sunday lunch to be a very good family initiative that promotes sharing and
discussion amongst all the branches of his family. This practice was started by
his grandfather after Family Business was mutually split between Alok’s father
and his two brothers into three segments consisting of outdoor media, TV
production, and print media. The business had grown and the common
understanding of the three brothers was that it is best to split the verticals
amongst them and grow them as independent businesses. Somewhere along this, the
three brothers also moved with their families to separate and bigger houses.
All these happenings made his grandfather institutionalize the Sunday lunch
meeting practice to ensure that the family bond remains strong. These weekly
lunches ensured that the brothers and their families retained close ties and
complemented each other’s business strengths. As Alok puts it, “Our grandfather
started a family tradition that whole family should sit together every Sunday.
Now it has been 20 years that we have been following this. Though he recently
passed away, we feel that it is now our duty to carry forward his legacy and
maintain the same harmony. This particular tradition has helped us create a
very strong family bond internally. Every Sunday we all meet, discuss each
other’s problems, business and family developments and new business opportunities”.
When the government policy[1] on
hoardings and billboards changed in 1997, it was this family understanding and
support that helped Mukesh Gupta to shift his core business from outdoor media
to print publications, which was already being handled by one of his brothers.
Alok goes on to say that instead of any feeling of rivalry and competition, he
and all his cousins happily pass on work to each other’s firms and pitch in to
help as required. Another very important factor that has led to the second
generation cousins being very close to each other is the family business course
all five of them did at SPJAIN. In Alok’s words, “Because of MBA in FMB, now
all of us are more or less aligned in our thought process. This is a great
space to be in. Usually families get on to a self-destructive mode between 2nd
and 3rd generation. Ours is just the complete opposite”. Thus the three
branches from the original business started by Alok’s grandfather and his sons
are now flourishing with third generation trying to step in big shoes!
Written by Dr Minu Mehta in collaboration with Alok Gupta.
AIFMB ,2016
Written by Dr Minu Mehta in collaboration with Alok Gupta.
AIFMB ,2016
